I asked my guides for a definition of “ratchet” several times, but never understood it until I experienced it. I was told there would be drink, smoke, loud music, and lovely ladies dancing dirty, all in a location unknown until a few hours before everything kicked off. Intriguing I know, but to me it sounded like some sort of sting operation. I decided to beat traffic to Los Angeles and spend the afternoon awkwardly playing with my phone for a few hours to mentally prepare.
I did not imbibe. After all, this was my introduction to what cool people do and I didn’t want to fuck it up. Some of the ladies in our expedition stopped at the corner store to buy small cans of sake to smuggle in. As the sun went down, we finally got an email with the address. It was a known hangout: a disused warehouse in an industrial part of town. Armed with $10 each and the most modest of fanny packs, we departed.
Security had set up on the sidewalk and were doing a good job of keeping the front of the warehouse looking dark and unremarkable. The females of the expedition did not pay their entry or stop at the door, but the males were pat down before being ushered down a twisting, crowded bottleneck of an entryway. My inner self, speaking in the voice of a gruff fire marshall, wondered how many partiers would get trampled in an emergency. Most of the debris was kicked into the corners, and most of the wires and pipes were out of reach, but this didn’t appear to be intentional.
But the beats were loud enough to shake the exposed rafters. A rotating cast of women danced on a shoddy plywood stage surrounded by imitators and admirers. Two or three DJs stood behind, spinning 2 Chainz and other possibly-satirical rap mingled with textural EDM. The crowd was largely college-aged, attractive, and very reflective of LA’s ethnic and stylistic diversity. Even auptight blogger in running shoes didn’t look out of place. It felt like the only thing we all had in common was our willingness to show up to a poorly-planned party in this part of town.
The security was thick, but they all had a Rottweiler-esque fixation on watching for confrontation. Indeed, the sake was passed around openly, and there was enough smoke for the flashing lasers to get trapped in sticky clouds floating over our heads. We had to step over a tangle of unrestrained cables (safety first!) and navigate past hastily-constructed barriers to get behind the main event, where the crowd jostled directly with the DJs and girls. A conservatively-dressed man concentrating on a tangle of audio equipment ignored the beamingly proud woman who began to grind on him.
My girlfriends were invited on-stage to briefly twerk to the music. I stood in my corner with some guys who looked like landscapers and thought about the definition of “ratchet”, which at this point seemed more of a superlative than anything. A metaphor did come to mind, but it had something to do with socket wrenches, so I pushed it aside.
The mood evolved with the beat. The dancing became less spastic and more sensual, though it still took place on all elevated plywood surfaces in the place. Twitter-length conversations were shouted into ears. I lost all concept of time, and then when the house lights came on, people obediently began to filter out. We were some of the last of them, and even the sidewalk crowd had thinned as people stepped over broken pallets and trash to their cars, packed in tight LA fashion for a few blocks.
By the time we were waited in the car for our driver, deafly reflecting on the night, it was well after last call. My metaphor returned: ratchet. Turn it one way, it noisily gives way, turn it the other, it locks. The shaking asses, dilapidated structure, and skunky smell seemed completely unrestrained, but a Californian serenity accompanied it. Ratchet felt like unidirectional, focused craziness, and tightening nuts and bolts never felt so good.
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